In almost every country, merchants are required to collect tax on behalf of the governing taxing authority when a purchase transaction is completed with a purchaser. To facilitate the determination of the amounts of purchase transactions and the appropriate amount of tax to be collected, POS systems are used by most merchants. Typical POS systems include fiscal printers that print customer receipts and control receipts showing the amount of taxes collected by the merchant on behalf of the taxing authority. Periodically, merchants are required to submit these receipts to the taxing authority, with payments commensurate with the amount of tax collected.
Taxing authorities have in the past experienced difficulties with this paper-based method because, in many instances, merchants fail to submit the complete set of control receipts for a period.
To deal with the inefficiencies associated with the above-described tax collection method, electronic collection of fiscal data has been proposed. In POS systems that print electronic fiscal data collection, a controller having a fiscal memory module to store fiscal data is connected between the host terminal and the printer. When a purchase transaction is completed, the fiscal data is stored in a fiscal memory module obviating the need to generate paper receipts.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,644,724 to Cretzler is directed to a point-of-sale tax collection system and method for automatically submitting taxes from a merchant site to a taxing authority. A merchant computer, electronically identifiable by a unique tax identification number, automatically stores the tax amount accrued during a customer transaction. A computer at the merchant's bank periodically accesses the merchant computer and transfers the accumulated tax amount to the tax authority's bank.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,872 to Golden et al. is directed to an automated taxable transaction reporting system. A number of merchant point-of-sale terminals are networked to a data collection subsystem, which is in turn, connected to a central computer. The central computer accepts inputs from multiple data collection subsystems and generates transaction tax reports for submission to the taxing authority.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,799,283 to Francisco et al. is directed to a point-of-sale tax reporting and automatic collection system. A “smart” tax register, located at the retailer, calculates the sales tax due during a transaction and then immediately forwards the transaction and sales data to a remote computer operated by a local taxing authority. Information from each local taxing authority is periodically compiled and collected by the national taxing authority for use in collection reporting.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,199,049 to Conde et al. is directed to a point-of-sale device for maintaining a secure electronic journal. Transaction data from a point-of-sale terminal is stored in non-volatile RAM and an encrypted digital signature is generated based on transaction data. The transaction data and corresponding digital signature are transferred to a separate journal memory for permanent storage. A taxing authority may audit the transaction data.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,360,208 to Ohanian et al. is directed to an automatic tax collection apparatus and method. A machine-readable code is applied to a saleable item and then associated in a central database with information regarding the item manufacturer and tax payment information for the item. Tax payment may be tracked by first applying the code to the saleable item and entering item data corresponding to the code into a database, such as whether tax has been paid on the sale of the item. The data may be verified by having a machine read the code and collect information regarding the tax payment.
Although these electronic fiscal data collection systems have proven to be better at providing more accurate tax collection information than the paper receipt systems, problems exist. These electronic fiscal data collection systems are subject to tampering. The software that controls writing of tax data to memory can be altered. This has enabled inaccurate data to be written to memory, memory to be overwritten and tax records to be cancelled. When this occurs, inaccurate tax data is submitted to the taxing authority.
Accordingly, there remains a need to improve the integrity of electronic fiscal data. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a novel fiscal data recorder and fiscal memory module for the same.